So it’s been a while since we discussed Version 3.0 but it is still happening. We’re putting the finishing touches on the new license drafts for the new US and new generic/unported licenses and working to make them public within the next 10 days.

As you know, Creative Commons has long been hopeful of enabling interoperability between licenses that guarantee the same frictions. Back in November 2005, Larry described his vision of building an ecology of free licenses.

Although it has not been possible to date to agree with other license stewards on the exact details necessary to make licenses that are equivalent to a specific CC license compatible yet, Creative Commons remains hopeful that it will be possible at a date in the future to secure the necessary agreement with license stewards for equivalent licenses. Because we would have to change our licenses to effect this and because we are reticient to version too often (not just because it requires a lot of work for all concerned but also because it adds complexity to a system designed to be simple), we propose to include the structure of compatibility as part of the Version 3.0 changes.

Given it is the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license that is most likely to be capable of compatibility with other existing flexible licenses, we are proposing to add new language to the “ShareAlike clause” of the BY-SA to establish the structure of compatibility.

An amended version of the draft Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 (US) license has been posted to the cc-licenses list. Please post any comments you have to this list.

Because we are anticipating that this will not be controversial or provoke much comment, we are hoping to roll out the Version 3.0 licenses by the end of next week with the BY-SA compatibility language included. So if you have comments or suggestions for improvement, please make them to the cc-licenses (subscription required) list as soon as possible.